Yes I am serious, and no this is not a scam. All students and employees of Palomar College are already licensed to use Office 365 for free. In fact, we are licensed to have up to five copies of Office installed on our computers, as well as full access to the full-featured versions of all the online Office applications. Oh, plus 1024 Gb of storage space on the OneDrive cloud storage system. For free. All you have to do to get this is click the button below, put in your Palomar email address, and click the link on the email you will receive there. (Obviously you will have to already have set up your...

Not sure how many Palomar students have tried out the Blackboard Mobile app for accessing Blackboard courses, but recently the Blackboard company launched another phone app which may be of interest. Called “Bb Student,” the app is for iOS and Android phones. (I say phones specifically, because when I saw this loaded onto an iPad… it was not pretty.) Also, do I really need to specify that with a name like Bb Student this app is NOT intended for faculty use? When loaded onto a phone, the app functions like a stream of data from your courses in Blackboard. There isn’t much in the...

As the Fall 2014 semester grinds to a halt, I wanted to take a moment to let everyone know about what is going on in Academic Technology for the next couple weeks. Blackboard support will be unavailable after Friday, December 19, 2014, all the way through until Monday, January 5, 2015. After that, support will resume our routine hours, Monday through Thursday from 8 AM until 8 PM, and Friday from 8 AM until 4 PM. And, as always, if you need to get in touch with Blackboard support, you can submit a help request at any time. Also of note on the Blackboard front, Palomar’s Blackboard system will be...

The Fall 2014 semester is wrapping up now, and there are a couple issues faculty who use Blackboard should really make the time for. The short version is: Export Archive Download Copy Validate Export your course. Since the process of adding instructor content to the course is done now, this would be a great time to save off a copy of all your course content. In other words, back up your work. The process is fairly simple, as this video explains: Archive your course. I recommend this step immediately after posting final grades into eServices. Create an archive of your course, which...

PALOMAR ONLINE TEACHING SITE SHOWCASE! Palomar College Faculty: Submit your site January 26 – April 1, 2015 Visit the “Best Of The Best” website for more information. http://www2.palomar.edu/pages/onlineshowcase/ Be the “BEST OF THE BEST”! Enter Your Online Course site in the Palomar Online Teaching Site Showcase. Showcase your exemplary use of the Internet as a teaching tool. Share your use of the Web for course delivery. Receive a Certificate. Receive recognition at the Faculty Tea. Be listed as an exemplary course implementing technology on the “BEST of the...

I’m certain you’ve received bulk messages, either on paper through the mail or (often as spam) though email. Often those messages use a function known as “mail merge” to modify the content of the message to show personalized information. Although that sort of function can be awkward if used poorly, Blackboard has limited options to get a “mail merge” effect out of your Blackboard content. This function was originally intended for developers to be able to list personal details, but these “tokens” will work for students and instructors within Blackboard...

Perhaps you’ve been in this situation: Need to work on the formatting of a document, but the author hasn’t provided the text yet. What you really need is some sample text in your Word document, but you don’t want to go out and find some text online, possibly for fear of getting interested in some new topic. (Or is that just me?) Microsoft Word actually has a function just for this purpose. Actually, I lie, it has two functions just for this purpose. To see this in action, fire up Word, open up a new document and type (without the quote marks, of course) “=lorem(5,8)” and...

If your classes go anything like my workshops do, then you seldom start right on time. I always hate “wasting time” out of my scheduled class time, and wish I could do something to make that time more useful. I’d really like to have something like the pre-previews content that movie theaters run; you know, the stuff with trivia games, ads, and the like that play before the house lights dim. There’s always an array of things to tell my learners about, and having that showing on the classroom projector while I do other things until class starts seems ideal. PowerPoint to the...

As previously noted, Palomar’s Blackboard system is going through some software upgrades and system tuning on Monday, August 11, 2014. The plan is for the system to go offline starting at 12:30 AM Pacific time, and have the system back online before 4:30 PM Pacific time. Should there be any news-worthy events during the upgrade process, I’ll be editing this blog post. So check back during the day on Monday, if you’re the obsessive type who wants to keep informed on the Blackboard system progress. UPDATE: Posted 10:40 AM 8/11/2014 The Blackboard system has been offline since 12:31 AM,...

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The purpose of the Academic Technology Resource Center is to facilitate and enhance teaching and learning in a supportive environment for students, faculty, and staff at Palomar College through the use of technology.